Receiving Yourself in the Fires of Sorrow

June 25, 2010 Leave a comment

 
 
. . . what shall I say? ’Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. ’Father, glorify Your name’ —Gospel of John, 12:27-28

“As a saint of God, my attitude toward sorrow and difficulty should not be to ask that they be prevented, but to ask that God protect me so that I may remain what He created me to be, in spite of all my fires of sorrow. Our Lord received Himself, accepting His position and realizing His purpose, in the midst of the fire of sorrow. He was saved not from the hour, but out of the hour.

We say that there ought to be no sorrow, but there is sorrow, and we have to accept and receive ourselves in its fires. If we try to evade sorrow, refusing to deal with it, we are foolish. Sorrow is one of the biggest facts in life, and there is no use in saying it should not be. Sin, sorrow, and suffering are, and it is not for us to say that God has made a mistake in allowing them.

Sorrow removes a great deal of a person’s shallowness, but it does not always make that person better. Suffering either gives me to myself or it destroys me. You cannot find or receive yourself through success, because you lose your head over pride. And you cannot receive yourself through the monotony of your daily life, because you give in to complaining. The only way to find yourself is in the fires of sorrow. Why it should be this way is immaterial. The fact is that it is true in the Scriptures and in human experience. You can always recognize who has been through the fires of sorrow and received himself, and you know that you can go to him in your moment of trouble and find that he has plenty of time for you. But if a person has not been through the fires of sorrow, he is apt to be contemptuous, having no respect or time for you, only turning you away. If you will receive yourself in the fires of sorrow, God will make you nourishment for other people.”

Oswald Chambers, from this website, June 25, 2010 reading:

http://utmost.org/

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A Temple of the Holy Ghost

June 24, 2010 Leave a comment

Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” is a comical story filled with Christian symbolism. There is a “freak”, a hermaphrodite, in the story. The story reveals to us how God regards His creation. Below is a quote from the story. A little twelve-year old girl has just gone to bed after hearing about the freak from two visiting girls.  The girls had just returned from the carnival:

“She lay in bed trying to picture the tent with the freak walking from side to side…She could hear the freak saying, “God made me thisaway and I don’t dispute hit,” and the people saying “Amen. Amen””

Some commentary about the story:

“O’Connor used the hermaphrodite to illustrate that The Holy Ghost or love of God dwells in each of us, whether pretty, ugly, rich, poor or anywhere in between. Even in the body of the hermaphrodite, a grotesque symbol of the unity of man and woman, a temple of God is a holy thing. The hermaphrodite knew that because God dwells in us, we are all reverent beings, and we should mutually treat each other with care, love and respect.”

Commentary from:  

http://mediaspecialist.org/zitotemple.html

Filed under Christian, Christianity, Flannery O'Connor, gender, gender dysphoria Tagged with , , ,

“A Good Man Is Hard To Find”

June 24, 2010 Leave a comment

Here is a quote from Flannery O’Connor’s story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”:

Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice. There was not a cloud in the sky nor any sun. There was nothing around her but woods. She wanted to tell him that he must pray. She opened and closed her mouth several times before anything came out. Finally she found herself saying, “Jesus. Jesus,” meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded as if she might be cursing.

“Yes’m, The Misfit said as if he agreed. “Jesus thown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn’t committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of course,” he said, “they never shown me my papers. That’s why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you’ll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you’ll have something to prove you ain’t been treated right. I call myself The Misfit,” he said, “because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment.”

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Father’s Way 2010

June 21, 2010 Leave a comment

Father’s Day weekend, 2010:  Friday night I spent with my son Ryan.  My daughter, Rachel, had to work.  She finally landed a job after many applications and some interviews.  Bless her heart, her determination paid off.  She will work mostly weekends at a nearby restaurant.  This weekend was the first one scheduled for her. 

 My son and I went to a local sports place where we had pizza, cold drinks and watched the White Sox on one big screen TV and the World Cup on another.  There is a different dynamic when it’s just him and me.  He’s more relaxed and funny.  Ryan has some new braces so he cuts up all of his food to chew. He shyly smiles when he tells me something he thinks is funny, just barely showing the steel in his mouth.  While we sat and ate Ryan ‘texted’ his friends. They are electronically social, recounting to each other what each one is doing at that exact moment in time. After dinner we picked up the new Jackie Chan movie and went home to watch it.

 My daughter came home from work and filled us in on her night.  She is learning to remember all of the menu items and their ingredients using homemade note cards.  No one told her to do this but she is industrious – like her father.

 Saturday I woke my daughter up early.  She wanted to see her boyfriend before he left on a family trip.  She returned around 2:00 pm, got ready for work and left at 3:15 pm. My son (a new 5’10” teenager) slept in till noon.  We ate left-over pizza for brunch. Ryan went to a friend’s house.  At 4:30 I picked him up and he and I went to a minor league baseball game.

 The Cougars night game started at 6:00 pm but the gates were open at 4:00 pm.  It was a gorgeous summer evening, no rain and not humid, just pleasant.  Our home team lost but it was just fun being there and watching the game and watching the people.  The third base side seats were just past the third base towards the outfield.  We could see everything.

 During the game, Ryan told me that a vendor was hawking “Sno-Cones”.  Ryan said that they were not “Sno-Cones because they, in fact, came in round plastic cups.  He wanted to make sure I knew this.  He’s just like his dad.

 In between the innings there is always some kind of family fun stuff going on on the field:  a diminutive three year old girl running the bases chasing after Ozzie the Cougars eight foot tall mascot; go-kart races for kids.  After 9 scoreless innings for the home team (Rattlers 8 –Cougars 0), the game ended and the Jesse White Tumblers came out on to the field.  They jumped, leaped, twirled mid-air and cart-wheeled between first and third base to the music of “Strike it Up”. Ryan liked this after-game show.  The kids are his age, doing amazing physical feats.  The dazzling fireworks show afterward filled the night sky with glitter and the smell of burning black gun powder.

 At home Rachel was waiting for us. When we arrived she talked about work and ate a basil chicken panini sandwich she had brought home. Ryan talked about the game. We sat and watched Raymond together and then each of us went off to bed at different times.

 Sunday morning I made French toast for the kids.  Rachel started work at 10:30 am.  I hung around with Ryan and then we went to Hobbytown.  We looked at all of the model cars, the different scales of 1:24 & 1:32.  Ryan picked out a cast metal White Lamborghini.  I bought him a red Lamborghini a few weeks ago so now he has a collection.  We drove home and then Ryan hung out with his friends in the afternoon. 

Sunday night:  Rachel came home from work and Ryan came home from his friend’s house.  I bought some Rib-eye steaks and French Fries and I made Steak Au Poivre Frites for supper. While cooking I played a CD of Dean Martin hits and remembered my dad watching Dino on TV many years ago.  When “That’s Amore” came on I began singing; when “Mambo Italiano” played I started dancing.  What can I say? Like father, like …

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Wise Blood

June 19, 2010 Leave a comment

The boy didn’t need to hear it.  There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.  He knew by the time he was twelve years old that he was going to be a preacher.  Later, he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he was not sure of his footing, where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown. 

(Hazel Motes, Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor)

The blind man gave his edgy laugh.  “Listen boy,” he said, “you can’t run away from Jesus.  Jesus is a fact.”

(The blind preacher Asa Hawks speaking to Hazel Motes, Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor)

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She Loved Much

June 14, 2010 Leave a comment

The Gospel reading yesterday came from The Gospel According to Luke:

Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
      “Tell me, teacher,” he said.

 “Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

 Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled.”
      “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

 Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”

 Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

 The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

 Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

 

*****

I have shed many tears during my life – tears of repentance, tears of joy, tears of great sorrow and tears of great loss…

 

She Loved Much

Surrounded by those who judge me… at a dinner party given for Jesus…

Tears pour from my alabaster heart,

Onto Your Holy earth-born feet, my kisses removing the clay, the dust;

The earthy/musty scent of my adoration-

The pure nard of my love for You-

Captures the room, pushing fear from my senses,

Permeating the place where You are,

The Place I want to be.

May my love for You, O Holy One of God,

Bring You great joy as You dine among the white-washed tombs.

“Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

© Sally Paradise, 2010, All Rights Reserved

*****

“What I believe about God is the most important thing about me.”  A.W. Tozer

Filed under Christian, gender, gender dysphoria, LGBT, Poems, Transgender Tagged with , , , , ,

Truth

March 17, 2010

The person who seeks justice but rejects the truth is really “wicked.” … the words of Goethe: “All laws and rules of conduct may ultimately be reduced to a single one: to truth.”

Filed under Christian, Christianity

Which of Us?

February 5, 2010

Which of us can wrest from the tomb

A life, a loved one?

**

Which of us can enter the womb

And the Savior of the world become?

**

And, which of us can speak the words

Of Truth and Eternal Love?

**

Only Jesus, born of Mary, begotten of Light!

****

© Sally Paradise, 2010, All Rights Reserved

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A Valentine’s Poem (with Nod to Henry Gibson)

February 4, 2010 Leave a comment

  

Two different Jelly Bellys are we
And two different modes of melody;
Two different windows open to share,
Two different whirligigs a-swirl in the air,
Two different Ones are We.  

© Sally Paradise, 2010, All Rights Reserved  

 

  

 

 

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Remain in Me

January 3, 2010 Leave a comment

“Remain in me, and I will remain in you.”  Jesus

As a student attending Moody Bible Institute back in 1971, I had heard things that I carried with me up until just a few years ago:  A Personal Evangelism teacher, Mr. W., taught us that among the cults stood the Catholic Church.  The’70s was a time when Biblical inerrancy claims and cult exposure was at a height.  The Jesus People movement had forced the gospel out into the open, onto the street level where it mingled with drug addicts, hippies and street people.  I was there in the sixties to witness this and to later hear Mr. W’s rants about Catholicism.

 At Moody, for one hour each Tuesday and Thursday, Mr. W. would ‘expose’ the cults and brandish Catholicism as far from the truth.  Among fellow students, teachers and parents, the message often became “We Bible backers are on the right track.  We have the truth.  We do not have the relics of Catholicism; we are modern, progressive and Protestant.  We are free ‘churchers’.  We know better.” Contempt for the Catholic Church and it teachings about Mary, transubstantiation, the saints, etc. was common among my among many Free Church people at the time.  I heard many sermons elevating the Free Church and the Bible Church above the Catholic Church. 

 The following year at Moody Mr. W. was gone.  It may have been that the school’s board decided the Mr. W went too far in his denunciation of the Catholic Church.  But, sadly, the damage had been done to many students who had heard him teach. They walked away with an ‘enlightened attitude’ towards the Catholic Church.  The Catholics would need the Truth as they knew it ‘should’ be.

 This ingrained belligerent attitude was heard the other day, December 28 th, 2009, on the train from Chicago to Wheaton. I was sitting with a woman friend talking about Christmas.  She was showing me her family Christmas pictures on her laptop. While we were talking, a young man that my friend knew sat in front of us.  Half turned, he sat speaking with us through out the hour long ride.  At one point he related a story about his neighbor two houses over.  With a snarl he called them the “Evangelical Christian neighbors.”  He met these neighbors on the sidewalk in front of an elderly couple’s house, the couple’s house situated between their houses  The young man said that these ‘Christian’ neighbors had done nothing to help the older couple.  In fact, the older couple called on him instead of asking for their help.  It was what the young man said next that sickened me:  “The Evangelical neighbors told me that they could help this elderly Catholic couple by getting them on the right track and making them Bible believing Christians.”  I was shocked and deeply saddened.  What I had heard at Moody some forty years earlier was replaying right in front of me:  the sad, sickening superiority of Baptist and Bible church believers towards others.  This type of contempt in these churches isn’t always so blatant but it exists in the everyday language of evangelicalism, so much so that many people are defensive against the Gospel as promulgated by these ‘better-than-thou” Christians.

 I started attending an Anglican church a few years ago.  Throughout my life I have desired the Eucharist on a regular basis.  The Bible/Baptist Churches have sanctioned communion to a once-a-month gathering instead of as often as believers are together in one place. These same churches have also stated that communion is only a remembrance of the Lord’s death and nothing more.  The understanding is that this communion is the exact opposite of the communion offered by the Catholic Church or transubstantiation.  This, among other things, means you are Protestant.  The implication being that the Baptists/ Biblers are in a better, more knowledgeable place than the Catholics. You have left behind the archaic and apostate teachings of the Catholic Church.  You are smarter, more modern than …

 I made decision to abide in Christ a few years ago when I started attending the Anglican Church.  I wanted to go deeper with my life in Christ.  And, I didn’t want another romantic relationship to further confuse and block my efforts.  I wanted to know Christ and to be known by Him.  My understanding of the Eucharist brings me to that place.  The Eucharist, the Thanksgiving, the bread and wine, are the REAL food and drink of life, (not the actual physical body of the Lord but the REAL Presence of the Lord).  I meet the Lord each time I partake of the bread and wine.  That is why I am so eager to go to my church and partake in the Eucharist. This REAL Food and Drink has changed my life more than any education, more than the miles of aisle walking, more than any worship or praise song. I have become more REAL and at the same time less like the world.  I know now that Christ carries a sword and carries the lamb.  He is divisive and unifying.  The longer I walk with him and meet him at the Eucharist the more I become like Him.  The more I am able to speak to others in His voice.

 Lastly, you may remain in Christ or you may not.  You have that choice.

 “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.  Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.”  Jesus

© Sally Paradise, 2010, All Rights Reserved

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